


Firefly

by SS98



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abuse, Asylum, Bottom Louis, Criminally insane, Dark Harry, Dominant Harry, Explicit Sexual Content, Harry Doesn't Abuse Louis, Hurt Louis, Innocent Louis, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Illness, Mental Instability, Middleston, Physical Abuse, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Harry, Protective Harry, Schizophrenia, Submissive Louis, Top Harry, Violence, Violent Harry, anger issues, dark themes, runaways - Freeform, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 01:58:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10844124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SS98/pseuds/SS98
Summary: Joey, or any of the people who earned the high risk opportunity to associate with Harry, felt no differently unsettled. “He’s at the library, last I heard. Want me to pass on a message?”“My boy sleeps here tonight.” Harry speaks with unblemished finality. He turned around and returned to his bed while his supper got cold on the cushioned floor.





	Firefly

**Author's Note:**

> Personally, one of my favourite stories containing some of my deepest themes. I enjoyed writing this from start to finish, and had to force myself to cut it short. Hope you enjoy it.

“Your dinner’s here, Styles!” The frustrating pounding of a fist on his cell’s door made Harry grind his jaw, rendering the forcibly installed retainer to slice across his gums.

He kept his gaze fixated on the frigid concrete wall opposite his cot, staring into the eyes of an imaginary escape. The one-of-a-kind solitary prison was designed especially for him after he turned twelve and had tacked the innards of a cat to his T-shirt with clothing pins. He was thrown into it as a cherubic adolescent with the darkest eyes his therapist had ever seen in his forty-seven years three days after a sinister hallmark event thought of his initiation.

There was nothing beyond this madhouse’s boundaries for him and he had no desire to disillusion himself. Harry’s been a patient at Fester’s Asylum for all his life when his whore of a mother got pregnant by one of the older residents during her rotation shift here from St Catherine’s Convent. Norman Frederick Styles was his father and Harry didn’t care to learn his mother’s name after hearing that she tried to kill him with blunt scissors in his infancy.

Harry Styles was born from blood and devastation, following suit with a strange keenness regarding the pitiful circumstances.

On Sunday he feigned innocence to approach the altar at their hospital church during a service, before ripping open the preacher’s throat with a wire hanger. Monday was his violent restraints’ enforcement; leather straps became steel handcuffs and his temples were burned until his skin was singed with electric shock.

On Tuesday he asked for crayons from his nauseating shrink and twenty minutes after his appointment ended, the nurse found two wax specimens jabbed into the elder’s eye-sockets while Harry scribbled away with bloody crayons on the walls. He was tossed into a padded cell and had broken all his fingernails whilst screeching that about a horror haunting him at night. Harry slammed his head so many times into the small pane of glass that without immediate medical attention, he would have ruptured blood vessels.

Nothing stood to testify his reputation like that Friday afternoon when the entire facility had come to learn of his actions, but one ignorant outsider was sent to deliver his food. She was found naked in the common room with her belly ripped open by no other weapon than bare, feverish hands. Harry had her blood soaking his clothes when they caught him innocently sitting in his cell waiting to be locked up again.

Harry grunted now when the tray slid underneath the door, some of the hot soup spilling onto the floor. His eyes flickered to the barrier with his teeth bared. “My boy?”

Joey, one of Harry’s thirteen exclusive attendants, had the grace to look apologetic. He’s been with Harry since the lad was first strapped down in his inescapable straightjacket, and now at twenty five he pitied the man Harry could have been instead of this monster. “Sorry, Styles. Louis’ in late with the Doc tonight.”

Waking up with practised ease from the cardboard mattress, Harry approaches the door’s column of light from the shadows. His eyes were twinkling but with nothing related to acceptance. “What’s he doing, Joey?”

There was something malevolent that seeped out of Harry’s condescending tone when he spoke a person’s name. It felt as unnerving as having him know all one’s secrets and poised above the weakest subjects – a wife, a new-born, and a childhood friend – ready to lunge.

Joey, or any of the people who earned the high risk opportunity to associate with Harry, felt no differently unsettled. “He’s at the library, last I heard. Want me to pass on a message?”

“My boy sleeps here tonight.” Harry speaks with unblemished finality. He turned around and returned to his bed while his supper got cold on the cushioned floor.

Louis has been a precious one in Harry’s life for ten years. They met when the younger male got lost in the asylum on the way out to the gardens. He happened by a broad and frighteningly tall patient with bloodthirsty green eyes wrapped up in glorious chiselled features surrounded by six lightly armed attendants. Harry catcalled and Louis winked back at his smirking expression.

Except, Louis was not _Louis_ at that moment and was rather fitted elegantly into the mind of _Sugar._ The oldest of his alters, Sugar was the strongest and most often occurred; Louis’ saviour in his most dire need for aid when his grandfather’s abuse reached a gruesome climax. Saturday was the day as well as Louis’ seventeenth birthday. Old grandpa Thomas had picked up Louis from the hospital after having put the teenager in it for fractured ribs and a shattered clavicle. He blamed Louis for killing his only child – the boy’s mother – and that night, his cane undid the recovery of Louis’ feeble skeletal frame.

The paramedics had never seen a child so many colours besides the light pink he was supposed to. When Louis woke up after a week he remembered the pain being prevented by a fearless outsider who heard the screams and came to his rescue. Another six months flew by with frequent trips from Sugar who nobody but Louis saw for his brightly hued pants, ridiculous belt buckles and formal shirts.

His coming to Fester’s was a grey occasion because Louis was not told it was an asylum until after he arrived. The boy cried and fought tirelessly against the plaid uniform being thrown on him, screeched pitifully when the shower was ice cold before his medication ever started tasting like fungus. Sugar told him it would get better if Louis just gave it a chance; he sat with Louis in the common room and his own cell but never when Louis went to the shrink. That wasn’t Sugar’s scene.

Such sweet innocence was horrifically thrust out by the meaty claws of the nun’s discipline. Louis was forced into shock therapy three times and had permanent bruises at his hairline to show for it. Medication was doubled and he wasn’t fed all day whenever Sugar visited him. He sobbed all night until his exhaustion caused his muscles to at last slacken into a sleep riddled with nightmares.

Meeting Harry however, that put a smile back on the miserable boy’s face in slow agony. They crossed paths only once after the hallway incident and Sugar rambled to Louis about the sexiest psychopath he’d ever seen. It was late at night and Louis knew no one would catch them. He saw Harry the next week in the garden with his arms bound in a criss-cross jacket and approached him for conversation.

Louis spoke plenty that day, nervous but hopeful as he was. He told Harry all about his favourite things and those he befriended at Fester’s. Their relationship was far from condoned and even if Harry rarely opened his mouth, he savoured the times he got to watch Louis’ in action. When the nurses found out Louis was taken away and Harry was locked up again, not let out for days. It was bearable because Louis daily found the means to visit him, bringing food or candy that they silently shared.

Sugar met Harry after Louis fell asleep on the floor in the man’s room. Surprised and intrigued as he was, Harry never did a thing to offend the alter or Louis. He lay there on the floor as well and fell asleep with Sugar combing through his hair, trailing off about celebrities in his dreams.

Harry shielded both Louis and Sugar as much as he could with the weight he carried at this vile institution. He got the attendants to move Louis’ belongings into his room by force, and threatened anyone who tried to reverse his act. Two nurses were harmed in the line of doing what Louis’ shrink asked, and an attendant was castrated with an iron ruler. Everyone stopped fighting after that.

“That kid’s hardly had a room to himself since he got here, Styles.” Joey boasted and slammed the foot slot closed. “I’ll direct him here when he’s done.”

An hour passes like dripping honey with Harry staring emptily at his neglected meal. The door’s lock drags against poorly greased hinges before the barrier peels back and Louis steps around him, all tender footing and wariness. Harry stands immediately and takes in his only worthy acquaintance, overdosing from afar on Louis’ familiar grin.

“Hey there.” Louis saw no beast in Harry and for that reason never cared to fear him. He treated Harry like his best friend, which he was in the nineteen-year-old’s eyes.

Unlike the villainous employees at Fester’s, Louis saw Harry as the one who shielded him with his own whipped back and restrained arms when the younger male needed it. Those very arms with unexplained cuts and bruises held Louis through his nightmares and were equally protective over Sugar. Harry’s intimacy with Sugar was minimal compared to that which he offered Louis. Sugar never minded and had even started visiting less because Louis had someone else to look out for him.

“Joey said you asked for me.” Louis mumbled from his place against Harry’s chest. He was quick to turn sleepy these days.

His skin held a pale glow from the residual water on his skin and he smelt faintly like lavender, even the limp strands of his hair.

Harry pressed his lips to Louis’ cheek and his lips twitched before returning to their customary grim state. “My boy ought to be here. Big, bad things are out there this late where I can’t save you.”

Considering their room is the only place Harry does not have to keep his arms caged, Louis saved himself the trouble of routinely undoing the straps. He toed off his comfortable but ridiculously green slippers and sat beside Harry on the cot. “I told you to call me something cute.”

“And it’s so apparent that I take orders from you, yes?” Harry gets to work helping Louis on the way to being comfortable on his lap. He combed a semblance of neatness into his boy’s damp hair – Louis showered every day and just recently stopped coming back with a sneeze.

“Of course.” Louis giggles, tucking his feet under Harry’s thighs so he may lie back. “Do you want to know what I did today?”

Harry distractedly grunted his consent and continued his soothing ministrations. He first shed Louis’ crisp white shirt expecting no argument, before going on to don the boy’s abdomen with gentle strokes. Louis laid his head on Harry’s pillow, prone to the care Harry offered.

“I helped organise the library. Did you know the books in there are ancient? Casey swore he found the original Bible scripture but no one believes him. He’s a sweet boy.” Louis arched when Harry released the knot on his pants, dragging them down his legs. “Maggie wanted to stay there, carry on reading all night but I told her to get going. It isn’t safe until they get rid of that James. A real bad egg, he is.”

Pale spheres with green pulsating centres follow Louis’ every movement. The peaceful rise-and-fall of his chest, the slight tremor in his toes whenever Harry brushed a ticklish region of his followed by free speech were just a few. Miracle they were, and to Harry most of the credit was owed.

“Firefly.” Harry summoned Louis’ attention. He was contented to have Louis free his legs so he might wrap them around the older male’s waist. “I think I’ll call you firefly.”

“Really?” Louis’ widened eyes portray his eager reaction to the proposition. He plants a trademark kiss on Harry’s jaw without forgetting to nip at his stubble. “You think I’m a firefly?”

His companion replies untrained honesty, sometimes it was charm and other times more devastating. “Brave, that’s what you are. Brave and belonging to who?”

Louis didn’t hesitate in pecking Harry’s lips, beaming brilliantly at his own interpretation of the flattery. “Belonging to you.”

*    *    *    *    *

The common room is always boring in Louis’ eyes. Harry wasn’t allowed in it when other patients were present, and Louis would be pried from their shared confines if he chose to remain there. To occupy his mind he fidgeted with decrepit books and asked someone in charge if it’s possible to visit the petting zoo across the street.

It was most satisfying to spend an entire day in the company of baby animals with the most harmless members comprising his squad of friends. Between the bunny rabbits and fluffy caramel goats, Louis managed his meagre savings of quarters to buy a Turkish delight chocolate bar. He slipped it into his pocket and hurried after their departing party, entering the asylum’s grounds with more joy than he ever has before.

Sister Elizabeth allowed Louis, Maggie and Casey into the kitchen to help her with rolling dough for tomorrow’s bread. Maggie rambled about her latest reads about medieval serial killers and the Plague. Louis was the only one to pay her the attention she deserved, frequently stopping Casey from devouring the raw dough as is the habit that got him admitted to Fester’s. He swallowed twelve raw eggs, gnawed the flesh off uncooked meat and went so far as to cut up the neighbour’s hen before his mother decided something had to be done.

“I’d never want to be a princess.” Maggie scowled at her portion of the pastry dough. She picked at it with nimble fingers, muttering few words below her breath. “I like reading too much to spend time waving at strangers and courting princes.”

“Exciting.” Casey grinned, such an expression dropping when Louis scolded him for the flour around his mouth. “Sorry, Lou.”

Louis responded with an amused lilt as he wiped the pale powder from Casey’s face. “At least it isn’t chicken.”

“Weather says it’ll be something like thirty-four in the Celsius.” Sister Elizabeth announces to her companions.

Maggie knotted and kneaded her dough before handing it back to the authoritative figure. “A real steamer.”

“Yeah.” Louis takes it upon himself to slap Casey’s hands when the latter is close to making a snack of the uncooked bread once more. “Fireflies don’t feel hot though.”

“What?” Maggie questions his statement, straddling the bench they sat on and facing her fellow inmates – they stopped being ‘patients’ too long ago. “What do insects have to do with it?”

Casey, a self-proclaimed karaoke master, broke out into _What’s Love Got To Do With It_ while Louis answered Maggie. He was blushing. “Harry calls me his firefly.”

Nobody noticed Sister Elizabeth turn stiff as a post at her station by the industrial oven. What she hoped to avoid for poor ignorant Louis could not be stopped eternally, and anytime now the boy will ask to see Harry; broken and desperate Harry. Joey and her were the only ones not backing the operation underway and have therefore been taken off it.

Many dragging minutes after their eager conversation commenced, Joey himself burst through the door with wild eyes and every artery straining against his skin to display themselves in urgency. “They’re coming.”

Louis just about raised his head when a bigger group of white-clothed attendants walked in with more fierceness in their stride. He was lifted off the bench with more force than is necessary. “What’s happening?”

No answer comes his way and Louis panics, eyes darting between Joey and Sister Elizabeth. Their eyes only seem to say one thing, _‘Don’t fight, son’._

“What are you doing?” Louis asked the stern male cuffing his wrists, tugging on them with too much fear for one soul to harbour. “Stop that, it hurts. Joey? Joey, what are they-“

“Shut it.” The unpleasant stranger twists Louis’ arm at his back so the boy screeches and stumbles, needing their harsh strength to hold him up. “You resist, you get knocked out.”

Louis isn’t allowed to use his feet. He gets a solid kick to his shins so they’re bruised and battered as if attacked by a ram, bleeding against his pants fabric when they drag him through the hallways. Maggie and Casey were sedated which made Louis grateful even with his sliced lip and unrelenting resilience. Harry gave him the spirit to contest their abuse after a lifetime of accepting each blow.

By the time they reached the newly constructed Mirror Room Louis was unable to use his legs without shrieking and dropping like dead weight. He clawed at the walls to stay upright but his fingers were trembling, short nails broken and splintered. There was no help when his escapes were blocked, leaving him with only the entrance to the desired room where he crawled, sobbing when someone shoved him over the threshold.

Louis saw the room innards and began his struggle again, weak and deteriorated as he was. He screamed until his lunges throbbed and fought against the arms tossing him this way or that. A room full of mirrors.

“You’re hurting me- Stop it _please_!” He cried out in desperation, praying not for the first time. His own dying voice echoed back at him. “Harry! _Help- Sugar, please help me!”_

The awaiting chair had leather straps that Louis was pressed into, each buckle done up while he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Their solution was to utilise clamps that peeled Louis’ leaden eyelids apart and squirted salt water at his bloodshot pupils while Louis cried rivers down his reddened cheeks.

They left him there, those vile creatures. None of them were the monsters. _They_ were the real beasties; those who left Louis in this terrifying room with nothing to hide behind. He panted like a crazed animal while looking all around him at the reflections glaring back at him. They moved when he did and Louis screamed whenever it felt as though the waning air tickling his nape came from a disembodied presence.

The room was dark and malignant. Louis heard the rattling of the pipes supplying the asylum with water, and prayed with racing lips that nothing reached out for him.

“Relax, buttercup.” That familiar voice gave Louis every bit of ease his stressed heart craved. Sugar came to him again, like he had whenever Louis needed him. “Don’t want your pretty face ruined with nasty wrinkles.”

Louis cried fresh tears, hopeless and _frightened_ at the sight of his protector. He fussed with the restraints but they didn’t budge and he breathed in ragged gasps when Sugar sat cross legged on the floor. “I-I’m scared again, Sugar.”

“A brave one like you?” Sugar had a look in his eye, one that mirrored Louis’ gut-wrenching terror but he was wise enough to hide it. “I don’t think so, buttercup.”

The mirrors creaked and Louis let out a shrill peep, turning his head at any possible angle to see what was going to get him. For now, it was nothing. Sugar would defend him.

“Come on now, listen to me.” Sugar brushed Louis’ matted hair away from his wild eyes and kissed his forehead. “Let me tell you a story.”

Sugar sat with Louis all night and while the fear of being picked out and gutted by something hidden in the mirror’s darkness did not abate, it did ebb like a receding shoreline. Louis listened to childish fables and felt his eyes grow painfully dry until it was all he could do to cry merely for lubrication. He couldn’t feel his legs and was sure they were broken, while his arms remained relatively mobile even though restrained.

Midnight struck and Louis was fading. He could barely see Sugar anymore and had bled out sufficiently onto the tiled floor until the waxed ground shimmered crimson. Louis’ breaths were laboured and his heart was more broken than any other part of him.

Life was a never-ending reel of violence until a short pair of years when Harry guarded him against it. Louis would smile if he had the nerve to. Whoever wrote the script of his existence wanted him to suffer because only the vilest beings are born into viciousness so they might die bleeding from it as well. He wanted to see Harry again before the impending black line reached him. There was no white light, only an abyss worth succumbing to.

“Hey.” Sugar’s voice reached Louis’ ear and his lip quivered. He didn’t want to leave his oldest friend behind. “I go where you go, buttercup.”

The room started to go dark at the same time that the only means of leaving swung back on its ledge, revealing the outline of a towering individual. Louis couldn’t hope anymore. If he was lucky they were here to drop staler saline into his eyes before barging back out. He made a noise, a vanishing protest, when the leather started undoing itself and he fell forward into the arms of someone who was sticky with his blood from kneeling on the floor.

“I got you, firefly.” Harry scooped Louis up and kissed his temple while whispering. He had less than two minutes before this window closed on him. He ripped the clamps off Louis’ eyes and let those shivering lids seal over them, standing swiftly. “Thanks, Sugar.”

*    *    *    *    *

**A YEAR LATER.**

Louis awoke to the warm aroma of breakfast being prepared on their two-plate stove. He lifted his weight with his elbows and sniffed although his eyes were still closed. Coffee was easy to detect but the edibles were tricky so he wrestled away the comforter and got to his feet, swaying the way he will for the rest of his life. It was this or a wheelchair because artificial implants had to be placed to supplement his irremovable but nonetheless damaged nerves.

He brushed his teeth with bleary vision and splashed cold water on his face before towelling the excess water off. Their bathroom was not unlike the rest of their humble apartment here in Middleston, population 352. It’s as far from civilisation they could get. One bedroom and a cramped kitchen beside their lounge – consisting of one couch and a pawn shop box television. Money came from their menial jobs and just about afforded their expenses with no room for luxury but not he or Harry was ungrateful.

Making his way to the origin of the breakfast scent, Louis found himself getting hungrier by the minute. Harry was an undiscovered chef who first mastered box meals and noodles before studying better meals so he could grant them that at least. This Sunday was their day off and they intended to enjoy it.

“Hi.” Louis crept into the kitchen and looked over Harry’s bare shoulder.

He never ignored the most recent scars there and always gave them his due respect. Hideous gashes were spanning the length of Harry’s back, healed cuts from the nylon thread used to sew it closed by the torturer who ensured that removal of the thread would result in further pain. They were in a V and rehabilitated in deep grooves that could fit Louis’ finger.

“Good morning.” Harry has only recently begun to feel safe saying that, when he felt reassured that no one at Fester’s was going to find them.

Louis looked away from the scrambled eggs and embraced Harry, arms tight around his abdomen. His best friend, lover and _home_. “Is this real?”

Harry spared an arm so that it may encircle Louis’ waist, pressing his lips to the boy’s unknowingly pouted ones. “Do you doubt that it is?”

“Sometimes.” Louis admits. He heard the stove being turned off and hid his face in Harry’s chest. “What’s for dinner if this is all for breakfast?”

“I got the steaks from work in marinade.” Harry informed him. His working in butchery seemed to solve more than just one of their dilemmas.

Louis poured them coffee in thrift store mugs and followed Harry to the couch where they customarily ate any meal together. He draped his legs across the man’s lap without the need for permission and sipped the cheap black beverage, no longer wincing at such a bitter taste. Harry loved his old films but left the dusty television off for now, choosing instead after eating to rub the points on Louis’ legs where he got sore the quickest.

“How do these feel today?” Harry asked, fingers working over Louis’ ankle and calf. So many surgery scars for a boy so undeserving.

“The same.” Louis answered honestly. He set his barren plate on the floor and wiggled his toes; twice now he’s lost feeling in them without doing anything to provoke such repercussions.

Their morning was spent lounging about on the sofa in front of Monty Python documentaries, although the bland genre was intermittently disrupted so Harry could crawl over Louis and kiss him deeply. Each time was unpredicted but just as divine when their lips connected, Louis giggling and Harry smirking because just for those moments they could entirely escape the horrors of their pasts.

Louis’ skill has improved although his only study had Harry as a teacher. He battled with his lover’s tongue for the right few seconds before submitting with a moan and allowing Harry to dominate the ordeal. Arms wound possessively around Harry’s shoulders so that Louis might be raised and deposited onto the older male’s lap. Hands got low enough to cup Louis’ derriere in a gentle, coaxing manner.

His boy is glorious when they made love as they did twice before dusk. Harry never put Louis in charge because the boy stuttered and trembled the one instance when he had. Rather and more to Louis’ taste, Harry concealed his petite frame with his own body before connecting their bodies most intimately. Sweet whimpers filled the air while Harry moved fluidly between Louis’ flexing thighs.

Thrust after deep thrust was slow, meaningful. Each grind was aimed at Louis’ most sensitive spot just the way they both treasure. Louis’ hands roamed freely to pull Harry closer, simpering in neediness. Their releases were found simultaneously prior to Harry refusing to extricate his disfigured length – Louis told him the remaining marks from a late and untidy circumcision were indicative of a warrior which is exactly what Harry was.

“I ought to get the steaks on the grill now, firefly.” Harry rubbed Louis’ hips with both hands reverently, his eyes following the circular motions intently.

Louis yawned and arched his back, cracking open the stiffness residing in his spine. “Can I help?”

“Lie here.” Harry picks up his tatty shirt and dresses Louis in it first, followed by pulling boxers on for his boy. He places a pillow under Louis’ back to soothe the burn of tired muscles. “Let’s keep this here so I can always see you, firefly.”

Harry chops and roasts the selected vegetables while grilling the steaks. He ensures that Louis restricts his movement until the in-and-out aching ceases completely. They eat dinner during a Marx brothers’ film and afterwards shower consecutively so that Harry can make it to his six o’clock shift at the butchery. Louis has no less of a responsibility for his work at the only bakery in town opens at nine and he’s needed two hours before.

“It’s almost the perfect nail.” Louis was pouting about Harry having to cut his nails – it was not recommended that he handle the task himself after the six times he sliced through skin mistakenly. “Do you have to cut it?”

He was praising his second to smallest toenail; something about its appearance made Louis suddenly fond of it. Harry shook his head and smugly went about clipping the others first. “You’re bound to make the rest of these jealous, firefly.”

“They’re toes, Harry.” Louis wiggled on the lip of the bathtub and set his chin on his knees. “I wish we got mail.”

Harry met his gaze with a crooked brow. “Why is that?”

Louis shrugged meekly and watched Harry put socks on his feet so they’re warm all night even when he kicks free of the covers. “It would be exciting, don’t you think so? To open letters and write your own back.”

“Go to the post office tomorrow, if this is what you want.” His lover replies with the only solution he can think of. He wants to make Louis as happy as he can even if it isn’t all that the gentle boy deserved. “Ask one of them to get you a writing friend.”

“Really?” Louis is grinning and under their poor bulb operative looked to be glowing with this optimistic prospect. Straddling Harry’s lap and kissing him as thanks is hardly enough. “I can?”

“It’s what you want, firefly.” Harry takes Louis’ hands by his delicate wrists and lays a trail of pecks up to his shoulder. “I’d like to know who it is you’re speaking with however.”

Louis is too far gone, already imagining all the fun to be had. He can befriend strangers of vastly different circumstances or surprisingly similar ones from around the globe. “That’s okay. Thank you, Harry.”

“Hmm.” His ‘boyfriend’ for all intents and purposes though the term fails to award their relationship any justice, accepts another kiss as his reward for this generosity. “Go to bed now, firefly.”

Louis ventures the next day to their tiny post office in the town square, tucked in between a supermarket and a permanent ice cream house. He acquires a list of possible ‘pen pals’ that he thinks to be most suited to his personality, and that being so it happened as Louis took down every available name. During the hour free between his job at the bakery and at the bookstore that are two blocks apart, Louis skims over the names with a bubblegum ice cream cone.

*    *    *    *    *

Two days later, Harry comes home with a newspaper that cost fifty cents and drops it onto Louis’ lap so the front page headline is most prominent.

**FESTER’S EXPOSED – The heinous and inhumane treatment of patients is finally brought to light.**

Temporarily setting aside his pen and set of drafts for the first letter to an Australian hotel concierge, Sarah Perkins, Louis lets the unimportant pages of the _Middleston Daily_ fall to the floor. His hands tremble as if experiencing their own quakes from his core extending outwards. Harry collapses onto the couch beside his stunned lover, posing as much comfort as his own shock is willing to.

“Good.” Louis finally speaks after reading the extensive article twice over, memorising each word as something heavy in his memories is slowly soothed. He drapes an arm over Harry’s shoulders and slowly plants himself on the man’s thighs. “I…….It’s good they all know about that place now.”

“That isn’t all, firefly.” Harry extracts a crumpled envelope from his jacket’s inner pocket and holds it out.

It’s after the hurried ripping open and speedy reading of the introduction, that Louis starts fervently shaking his head. He squashes it between his palms until it’s a ball of ink and paper, some of the former staining his flushed skin. Harry has to take the remains away before Louis does something more impulsive.

A reporter from New York City tracked them down and asked for an interview as they were the only two victims to ever escape Fester’s. Their story is bound to turn heads.

“No.” Louis sniffs and hugs Harry, hiding from the light and the world. “No, Harry. Don’t make me. Please I can’t-“

“I know, firefly. I know.” Harry embraces his boy from all degrees and squeezes him affectionately. His lips meet Louis’ forehead while the latter is still in hiding. “I’ll let them know tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Louis’ bottom lip was wet from his teeth worrying it, peeling skin off until it bled while it quivered. Such beautiful blue eyes were marred by fear. “What if they find us tonight?”

Harry refused the proposition and nuzzled Louis’ cheek. “They won’t, firefly.”

“What if they _do,_ Harry?”

“I won’t let them, firefly.” Harry promises his vulnerable boy whilst carrying him through the dark but familiar flat to their bathroom. They shower in each other’s company and Harry silences Louis’ troubles with a warm voice vowing protection. Louis was almost completely pliant by the time they crawled into bed. “They’re not going to get you, firefly. I’m going to keep you safe.”

“Forever?” Came a voice from under the covers where Louis buried himself securely. No monsters could nab him by the ankles when his blankets were concealing him from them.

Harry effortlessly locates Louis’ hip and worms his way to the bare skin, rubbing with two fingers the way that settles his boy into sleep. “Oh for much longer than that, firefly.”


End file.
